(A Strategy for Progressives which
includes an
Environmental and Ethical Responsibility Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution to
limit corporate power, and steps to strengthen the backbones of decent
but weak
liberal elected officials.)

Close to 600 people in the SF Bay Area gave up
their President's Day Monday vacation to spend some nine hours in a
"Strategy
Conference for Liberals and Progressives" to address "How To Support
Obama to
BE the Obama Americans Thought We Elected" and "How to Launch a
Constitutional
Amendment to Restrain Corporate Power" after the Supreme Court's recent
decision to allow unrestrained corporate spending on elections.

For many, just being in the context where
this
discussion was happening in a face-to-face encounter with others, rather
than
an isolated individuals reading it on a computer monitor, seemed an
important
step toward re-empowerment. Many are suffering from post-traumatic Obama
abandonment syndrome--an ailment that came from being severely
traumatized by
Obama's political moves in the past thirteen months. A palpable
sadness,
depression, anger and even despair carried by many who had worked for
Obama and
now felt betrayed by his choices in his first year in office was mixed
with
compassion and a strong determination to not allow the political Right
to use
our despair as their ticket to a political revival. The conference was
conceived by Tikkun Magazine and its interfaith Network of Spiritual
Progressives (including secular humanists and atheists who consider
themselves
"spiritual but NOT religious") as a way to allow people who have been
having
these feelings privately to both receive the comfort of sharing those
feelings
with other liberals and progressives, and then to move beyond them to
actually
face the critical question: "What do we in the liberal and progressive
world do
now, if we face three, or hopefully seven, years of an Obama
presidency?"

The first step toward answering that question
was to grieve what we had lost, honestly acknowledging the painful, for
many
quite humiliating, fact that after having built so many walls of
self-protection against allowing ourselves to get sucked into some new
moment
of idealism, we had allowed those walls to come down as we became
energized
about Obama, only to find that once again our hopes had been dashed.
This was
not a crew of hardened lefties who might say: "You were always foolish
to hope
in Obama--don't you know that the
military-indusrial-health-agricultural-banking-investment-energy
complex
controls the society." Most people in the room had already integrated
that
knowledge of corporate dominance, but rejected the notion that repeating
its
truth was a sufficient way to change it. Instead, they had imagined that
Obama
could play an important role in sustaining the powerful mobilization
that had
already occurred around his campaign, and direct it toward significant
steps to
challenge the corporate power in ways that might even excite and attract
the
tens of millions of Americans who don't even bother to vote.

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In psychological research in which I was the
principle investigator for some twenty years at the Institute for Labor
and
Mental Health, I cane to understand the most people have a strong voice
in our
consciousness telling us that "everyone is just out to promote their own
narrowly conceived self-interest and that they will seek to manipulate
or even
dominate you unless you can more effectively manipulate and dominate
them
first," a voice that gives credence to the need to "look out for number
one,"
always suspect that others are interested in you primarily to get
something for
themselves and not because they can genuinely see and appreciate you,
and that
security for ourselves or our country is best secured by dominating
others
(either in the hard way that the Right and centrist Democrats champion,
namely
military power, or the soft way that some Liberals advocate, namely
through
economic and media penetration of other societies coupled with diplomacy
backed
by the threat of economic boycotts or future military interventions).

Happily, there's another voice in most people
that advises them, based in part of their own experience in the world
with
others, that safety and security can sometimes be achieved much more
effectively
by communicating genuine love, caring and a generosity of spirit and of
deed
toward others.

Most people are somewhere on a continuum
between the first fearful consciousness (call it the Domination world
view) and
the second more loving and caring consciousness (call it the Generosity
world
view). And where exactly we are at any given moment is determined in
part by
our own childhood experiences, adult life experiences, the ideological
or
religious worldviews we hold, and, importantly, by our own sense of
where the
social energy is moving at any given moment. So, during the early years
after
9/11 social energy was so overwhelming moved toward fear and the
Domination
worldview that even many liberals and progressives became timid about
articulating an alternative based on love and generosity. Conversely,
the Obama
campaign momentarily opened up a new set of possibilities, and many
people did
in fact move closer to the Generosity world view).

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What happened in Obama's first year is that
most of those who had allowed themselves to hope began to appear to
themselves
and others as naÃ¯ve fools, and the humiliation that they experienced
will take
some years and psychologically or spiritually sophisticated
interventions, of
which the conference in San Francisco was a first example, though Tikkun
and
the Network of Spiritual Progressives (in co-sponsorship with many other
groups
including The Nation magazine, Progressive Democrats of America, Yes!
Magazine,
Peace Action, The Institute for Policy Studies, the Shalom Center, and
Code
Pink) will be holding a 3.5 day conference of this sort in D.C.
June11-14
and is seeking to encourage and support similar gatherings around the
country
in the next few months. More info at www.tikkun.org.

Social energy is never static--it is
always moving in one direction or another. So as many Americans became
disillusioned by the failure of Obama and Congressional Democrats to
take up
the electoral mandate (bigger than that of any president in the past 20
years)
and create a pro-people, peace and social justice administration and
legislation, but instead managed to give priority to the banks and
investment
companies, the pharmaceuticals and the health care profiteers, the coal
industry
and the nuclear industry, the war-makers and the ideologues of the
American
Empire, the stage was set for Right-wing opportunists to cast themselves
as a
quasi-populist voice, and to attract to the Tea Party movement not only
those racist and domination-prone Americans waiting for their chance to
pounce
on Obama, but also many confused middle income people who might have
been
equally attracted to a pro-democracy, anti-corporate movement had that
emerged
in time.

So, the most important first step for
liberals
and progressives is to explain to themselves and each other that history
is not
over, that the Obama years still retain some possibilities, and even
though we
need to give up our (often unconscious) fantasy that Obama was our
messiah who
would save us and the world, we can and must still retain our
understanding
that the suffering in this world through poverty and oppression, the
destruction of the environment and the possibility of ending all human
and
animal life on the planet Earth, and the survival of our own souls and
mental
health requires that we revive a movement based on love, kindness,
generosity,
ecological sanity, and caring for each other, including everyone on the
planet.
And, indeed, were the Democrats to put those values at the forefront of
their
own reelection campaigns, they'd be far more successful than trying to
defend policies or legislation that has been more about compromising
with the
powerful than promoting a fundamentally different kind of world.

The SF Conference and its follow up in D.C. focused on two first steps
in
this direction: 1. An Environmental and Ethical Responsibility Amendment
to the
U.S Constitution and 2. A Global Marshall Plan.

The
EERA is designed to go along with, not replace, a narrower amendment
that will
simply overturn the Supreme Court's "Citizens United" decision. Such an
amendment is currently being worked on by a coalition of
inside-the-beltway
liberal and progressive groups and deserves our support. But the EERA
seeks to
use this moment-- in which corporate power has been so clearly exposed
not only
in the Supreme Court decision but also in the capitulation to the
corporate
agenda by many in the Obama Administration and in the Congress, and
simultaneously in the recognition that the economic system itself is not
a
solid rock but might actually lead to future disasters even worse than
what
happened in the past two years--to mount a more serious challenge to
corporate
power.

The
NSP conference presented four different variations on an amendment, from
a one
sentence version already introduced by Congressional liberals John
Conyers and
Donna Edwards ("'The sovereign right
of the
people to govern being essential to a free democracy, Congress and the
States
may regulate the expenditure of funds for political speech by any
corporation,
limited liability company, or other corporate entity" to a much
lengthier one
based on the assumption that if the people of the US really want to
restrain
corporate power, we can't rely on the strategy of a short statement that
the
Congress is supposed to implement, but rather that we'll need to write
the
legislation into the Amendment itself.

Many
people
seemed most taken by the following version:

The Environmental and Ethical
Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. (EERA)

Article
One: Corporations are not and shall not be considered "persons" or given the rights
of
individual human beings under the terms of the U.S. Constitution or the
constitutions of any state in this Union, nor shall Congress or the
courts give
them similar rights or protections. The use of money in elections is not
a
protected form of "speech" and Congress shall
limit the
amount of money spent on any election campaign, lobbying or advertising
to shape public opinion on any given piece of legislation or issue, and
shall
require equal time from media or equal print space to present the major
alternatives in elections and ballot measures in the words of the
candidates or
those supporting any ballot measure, and may take other steps to insure
that
the American people are well-informed about the major alternative
positions
being debated in American society on economic, environmental, health and
health
care, corporation's environmental and ethical responsibilities,
high-tech,
science, defense, human rights, child-rearing, elderly care, product and
food
safety, social justice, war and peace, labor, wages, employment,
housing,
immigration, transportation, foreign policy, nutrition, education,
the legal system and prisons, and caring for each other issues, and the
worldviews and ethical and environmental values that lie behind the
differences
in position, and informed of these alternative views by the advocates of
the
different positions who must also be given adequate and equal time to
explain
their critiques of the alternatives to the positions they hold.

Article
Two:
Congress shall require that any corporation with an income of over
$100 million per year must obtain a new corporate charter once every
five
years, and that charter will only be granted to those corporations that
can
prove a satisfactory history of social, environmental and ethical
responsibility to a grand jury of ordinary citizens.

Article
Three:
It is the responsibility of the United States Government and all its
offices, and all other state and local governments, to develop policies
and
implement them, for the sake of enhancing the environmental
sustainability of
the planet and the well-being of all people on the planet, including,
but not
limited to the well-being of all Americans. Citizens may receive
injunctive
relief from policies that are environmentally destructive, and Congress
shall
provide adequate funding for a judiciary sufficient to inquire
thoroughly about
these alleged threats to the environment, hear the testimony from
different
perspectives, and then issue relief to the impacted individuals or
communities
as they may deem appropriate, and impose fines or imprisonment to
corporations whose boards have not taken adequate steps to protect the
environment or government officials who have been similarly negligent.

Article
Four:
Every educational institution in the U.S. from k-graduate or
professional
school training shall require at least one course each year to train
people on
how to become aware of the ethical issues faced in decision making in
the
various aspects of daily life, the world of work, government, the
military,
police, the courts, the corporations, banks and investment firms, the
stock
markets, educational institutions, foreign policy, economic policies,
human
rights policies, health institutions, immigration policies, and the
pursuit of
environmental sustainability, food and agricultural policies, regional
planning, and homeland security. This training shall allow for a
variety
of perspectives on the ethical responsibilities that people hold not
only to
their clients but also to the larger society, the entirety of humanity,
and the
sustainability and flourishing of the natural environment of the Earth.

The second major focus was on the Global
Marshall Plan. The NSP version (read it at www.spiritualprogressives.org)
calls for the US to take the lead by example in creating an
international
consortium of advanced industrial societies, each of which would
dedicate 1-2%
of their GDP each year for the next twenty to once and for all end
global
poverty ,homelessness, hunger, inadequate education, inadequate health
care,
and repair the global environment. Part of the plan involves changing
the terms
of international trade to favor the poor instead of only the advanced
industrial societies. Though few of the attendees believe that such a
plan
could pass the present Congress, they argue that the anti-war movement
has been
hobbled by only knowing what it is against, not what it is for, and the
Global
Marshall Plan gives that positive vision. The NSP has consistently
argued that
it is the Strategy of Generosity rather than the Strategy of Domination
that is
the most rational path to achieve Homeland Security, and that the GMP
could be
funded by the same monies that will be squandered in endless wars.
While
supporting the more limited ideas of the Millenium Goals, NSPers argue
that
Americans are more likely to rally around a program that could in fact
end
global poverty than one that only promises amelioration of the worst
suffering
in the poorest of states, but not a fundamental transformation of the
economics
that continues to maintain this situation. In late January,
Congressman Keith Ellison introduced H.Res. 1016 which called on the
President and the Congress to embrace this strategy of generosity for
homeland
security.

The final part of the action program includes a
petition to the President and the Congress to:

1. declare that the war on terror
is over and define terror as a police issue and terrorist as well
armed-criminals, not a threat to our national survival

2.
Support the EERA and the Global Marshall
Plan

3.
Support "Medicare for Everyone" and
require that any hospital or clinic receiving US funds and any part of
the US
military and the US government use generic drugs and purchase them
wherever in
the world they can be safely produced as the lowest cost

3.
Education reform to teach students that what
should count in life is to maximize our own and each other's capacities
tor be
loving, kind, generous, caring for each other, ethically and
environmentally
responsible, and filled with gratitude and awe at the grandeur of the
universe.

4.
Articulate a fundamental worldview of
generosity and caring for others and make it obvious how your decisions
and
policies and legislation flow directly form that worldview.

Of course, there were many concerns about how
"realistic"this agenda was. And if we allow ourselves to have "what is
realistic"be defined by our media, our well-intentioned but
inside-the-beltway consciousness bent liberal elected officials tell us
"what
is realistic," not much can change. The most significant changes
have happened because the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement,
the
Women's movement, and the GLBT movement refused to be realistic in this
sense.
And precisely because they refused to be realistic they succeeded in
changing
reality in dramatic ways. Or to put it in terms that should be on
everyone's
banner: you cannot know what is realistic in politics until you engage
in
fierce struggle for your highest ideals, because what looked unrealistic
before
you engage in that struggle can suddenly become very realistic when
others get
the sense that it is safe for them too to fight for their highest
ideals. So to
our politicians, we must insist: Don't be realistic--be principled, and
even a
little utopian--because that is precisely what will make major steps
toward
amore humane, just, peaceful and loving society possible.

The San Francisco Conference of Liberals and
Progressives may not have changed the world--but it did re-energize and
give new
hope to many who had previously felt defeated. If this can be repeated
in city
after city around the U.S., we might not yet have to accept the
inevitability
of a resurgent Right. Please register NOW for the conference in
D.C. and spread the word to all your friends (feel free to post this on
your
website and send to everyone on your email lists and Facebook page and
Twitter.
And IF you are someone who thinks I should have been more critical of
Obama and Democrats than I've been, please read the P.S. below!!!!

P.S. FOR THOSE WHO THINK I'M BEING TOO
GENTLE ON OBAMA AND THE DEMOCRATS:

Politics,
like life, is
about dialectical processes in which consciousness becomes more and more
aware
of itself as part of the totality of all being. Each of us has the task
of
assisting in that process.

My
particular task in
2010 is to move people from the illusions about the global capitalist
system so
that they can understand the need for a fundamental transformation--what
I call
a New Bottom Line (please do read my book The Left Hand of God). I know
that
there is a vanguard of people who have thought that the way to move that
consciousness in others is to proclaim the need for socialism or
anti-capitalism. I bless their efforts.

But
in
my humble assessment, that has not been a very successful strategy.

My
way of changing consciousness involves two key elements:

a.
getting people into a big tent in which they are able to hear
transformative
ideas to which they would never have exposed themselves if the condition
for
walking into the tent was that they already had to believe that
capitalism is
evil, the Democrats unsalvageable, and Obama a tool of the capitalist
class;
and

b.framing
the transformation that is needed in the spiritual and religious
language that
is actually, in my view, the most transformative and deepest truth of
the kind
of system we need--hence my call for A New Bottom Line and the
globalization of
love and generosity. Our NSP New Bottom Line says: Institutions and
social
practices, corporations, laws, social policies, our educational system,
our health
care system, our courts, our religious institutions, our professional
organizations, and even our personal behavior should be judged
"rational,"
"productive" or "efficient" not only to the extent that they maximize
money or
power (the Old Bottom Line) but also to the extent that they maximize
love and
caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity and
behavior, increase our capacities to respond to other human beings as
manifestations of the sacred, and our capacities to respond to the
universe
with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur and mystery of
the
universe, of consciousness, and of the ultimate Unity of All Being.

It
is these terms that I've found help more people listening and opening
themselves up to a new consciousness, rather than simply speaking to
those who
already understand how badly we need a different kind of system. But,
and I
stress this, my goal is NOT simply to sell the traditional Left
solutions with
a different framing or a manipulative use of religious or spiritual
categories.
Rather, I believe that the solutions to a global transformation require
elements that a traditional Left consciousness cannot and has not been
able to
adequately develop--including a focus on developing our capacities to be
caring,
loving and generous and building economic and political and social
institutions
that have that as a primary goal, creating in us a willingness to give
up on
the supposed need to consume more and more and to reject the goal of
"growth" of the economy and of the population and instead learn to
live more simply and more in tune with the needs of planetary
environmental
sustainability, a capacity for humility, forgiveness of those who have
hurt us,
joyousness, and thanksgiving and celebration of the grandeur and
mystery
of the universe and of consciousness and of Being Itself (which for me
gets
best expressed in religious terms, but for others in non-religious or
secular
or atheistic terms), and a capacity to see each and every human being,
no
matter how distorted, as still embodying the sacred and hence equally
valuable
with every other human being on the planet.

I
believe that it is this approach that will most likely be the one that
could
bring the most people into a transformative movement, but I know enough
to know
that I don't really know, that there are probably dozens and dozens of
paths
that may work for different sections of the global population, so I
welcome as
allies anyone who really seeks to save our planet and to end the
needless
suffering that is caused partly by our global economic system, and
partly by
the unconscious ways that each of us passes on to others the pain that
has been
passed on to us from the generations of suffering in the past and
through
social institutions that continually frustrate our human yearnings for a
more
loving and kind and generous world.

I
hope this gives you
some idea of why I move more cautiously in relationship to Obama and the
Democrats than you, while welcoming you into the Tikkun world and hoping
that
you will support us by joining the Network of Spiritual Progressives
(for
secular humanists as well as religious people) and help us develop the
parts of
our program like the Global Marshall Plan that you might support even if
you
don't support our efforts to reach out to Democrats and to those still
enamored
by Obama. Please join our efforts at www.spiritualprogressives.org

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun and national chair of the Tikkun Community/ Network of Spiritual Progressives.
People are invited to subscribe to Tikkun magazine or join the interfaith organization the Network of Spiritual Progressives-- "both of which can be done by (more...)